1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an accommodating device and an image forming apparatus.
2. Description of Related Art
An image forming apparatus such as a copier, a facsimile, or a printer equips an accommodating device (paper feeding trays) for accommodating a bundle of stacked sheets of printer paper (hereinafter referred to as “paper bundle”) thereinside or in an external paper feeding device. When a user supplies paper in such an accommodating device, the user needs to prepare a paper pack including a paper bundle wrapped with wrapping paper, take out the paper bundle from the paper pack, and then place it in the accommodating device. In order to reduce such a burden of the user, various techniques have conventionally been proposed. See Japanese Patent Publication No. 2003-95456.
The technique of the publication proposes a paper feeding device that automatically removes the wrapping paper of a paper pack thereinside. In the technique, a user can just directly place a paper pack in the paper feeding device when supplying paper. The removed wrapping paper is discarded into a trash can (a discarding unit) in the paper feeding device.
However, in many cases, such a discarding unit as mentioned above is arranged in a limited space in a paper feeding device and does not have sufficient capacity. Furthermore, an empty paper pack remains in an opened state in the paper feeding device. Due to this, when the empty paper pack is conveyed to the discarding unit insufficient in capacity, the discarding unit soon becomes full depending on the shape and the like of the empty paper pack. In this case, a user needs to frequently discard empty paper packs stored in the discarding unit.